I Wish We’d All Been Ready

Scripture:

“‘So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,’ says the LORD Almighty.”

—Malachi 3:5 

Observation:

I do not know how anyone in America can read passages like this one found in Malachi and not seek out sackcloth and ashes in lament. When I read this passage I immediately became overwhelmed with a deep sense of sorrow. YHWH personally is coming to put you (read plural) on trial for your (read plural) crimes against God. Adultery is normative. It is almost to difficult to sift through the lies told. Studies show that America has the one of the widest gaps between rich and poor in the world. The prison industrial complex continues to oppress the young men of impoverished communities for profit. Widows (in the biblical context is any women without means to meet her needs and/or the needs of her children) struggle to raise their children often losing them to the prison industrial complex. Many foreigners in the midst of America are maligned, mistreated, and taken advantage of consistently; the fact that many foreigners are referred to as illegal (read meaning without rights) speaks of the justice they are denied. Christians in America believe that because we say “under God” or “in God we trust” that we actually fear God. The truth is there is more reverence for the “free” market in many of the churches in America then there is for God. When “in God we trust” is written on notes and etched in coins, one must ask which God, YHWH or Mammon.

Application:

America YHWH is coming; Wake up! Wake up, to the injustices that we (read every person in America, not just Americans) are complicit in because we reap the benefit of her unjust spoils. Listen to the prophetic voices of old who are speaking in our midst today. Do not turn a blind eye to injustice and a deaf ear to the cries of the oppressed. Let us actively pursue justice, the putting of things to rights, and not punitiveness. Let us become reverent of YHWH placing our trust in God and not in capitalism or any other system. Let us be agents of reconciliation on mission in the kingdom of God and not any other kingdom (read literal, not spiritually metaphoric). America YHWH is coming, and in the words of the late Larry Norman, “I wish we’d all been ready.”

Prayer:

Lord, I repent of my complicatedness in the injustices of the society that I am a part of. Show me how to act prophetically and live a life of reconciliation. In the matchless name of Jesus I pray Amen…